Quick Tip Tuesday – Get Texturized!

One of my favorite things about digital scrapbooking is going to live-and-in-person crops!  In addition to having a small group of local digi-junkies, we have a thriving community of paperscrappers who tolerate us breezing in with our little totebags and laptops to their crops.

They’re always curious (even when they try not to show it) about what we do.  So I often pull out my albums and leave them lying on the table for people to look at, which will start the conversation.  They’ll pick up the book and flip through the pages slowly, politely commenting here and there.  But I know I’ve got them when I catch them TOUCHING THE PAGE!  Inevitably, someone will surreptitiously slide an index finger across the page to see if she can feel the edge of the “paper”. That’s when we start the “bet you thought digital layouts were too flat and boring” conversation.

One of the secrets to creating touch-tempting layouts (aside from good shadows) is texture.  Paperscrappers are accustomed to textured cardstock like Bazzill makes. So early on in my digi career I learned to add texture to my papers.

One way to do that is the Texturizer filter.  This filter allows you to use any image to add a texture to your image – and it’s simple to use in both PS and PSE.

Here’s how:

• In the Menu Bar choose Filter> Texture> Texturizer. You’ll get a full page dialog  box, with a bunch of sliders on the right.
• In the box where it says Texture: you can pull down the menu and choose one of four preset textures. (More about how to add your own later!)
• Move the Scaling slider to the right, and notice how the image in the preview window at the left changes.  Be careful when you scale up, some textures will look ‘soft’ or blurry scaled over 100%.
• Move the Relief slider to the right to change how strong the effect appears.  What this does is makes the highlights and shadows stronger (lighter and darker).
• You can change the direction the light is hitting your texture with the pull down menu next to Light:
• Try checking the Invert box for a different look.

Tips:

• Zoom out. The preview window automatically opens up at 100% – this shows you what your eye will be able to perceive when you print the page.  But if you don’t intend to print, (or even if you do) you may want to zoom out to see what it will look like.  NOTICE that the look is MUCH worse at odd zooms:
  
  the image to the left is at 25%, the one on the right is 25.725. Notice how different they look!  So don’t be freaked out if it looks funny, if it looks good at 100% it will print fine.
• Don’t overdo the Relief – the noisy effect you see on the right above is worse the higher the Relief setting.  Keep it subtle, really you only want people to be able to see it if they look.
• Check for repeats – sometimes the image that is used to create the texture creates obvious patterns where it repeats.  Sometimes this is ok, other times not.  So when you zoom out, check to see if you see and obvious pattern, and if you like it that way!

Making your own texture:

Any image can be used to make a texture. For papers images of fabric, woodgrain, even peeling paint can make great textures!

• In the Menu Bar to to Filter> Texture> Texturizer.
• When the dialog window opens up, look for the right-facing arrow in a circle next to the Texture pull-down and click on it, then choose Load Texture.
• Navigate to where you have a .psd image you want to use as a texture. (You can prepare these by taking a .jpg image, opening it in Photoshop or PSE and saving it as a .psd file.  I have a whole folder labeled Textures so I can find them when I want them.)
• Click on the image to choose it, then click Open.
  

• Your image will now appear as a texture!  The program uses the black and white values to create areas that look high and low to give the impression of texture, much like the bevel and emboss layer style does.

Experiment with images and settings, and soon you’ll have people touching your layouts too!

Notice the differing textures in this layout – one of my most touchable!

There are lots of sources for free texture images, just be careful.  Many of them are for web use, and they’re very small images, so when you scale them up they get very ugly.

Here are some links to get you started!
http://www.amazingtextures.com/textures/index.php
http://mayang.com/textures/
http://www.photoshoptextures.com/

Do be sure to let us know how it goes!  Post a link here, or post in our gallery, and we’ll check it out.

Jenn

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